Where are the climate optimists? Why we need not only warnings, but also solutions.

Close your eyes and then think about the word 'climate change'. What do you see? Probably one of these images: melting ice floes with pathetic polar bears, polluting industries, declining coral reefs, violent storms and floods, dying animal species, persistent forest fires, extremely dry plains, and so on. In short: a black and ominous world that leads us directly into the abyss.

What if I tell you that these images are part of the problem? That the story we tell about climate warming, and everything that has to do with it (that's pretty much everything), contributes to our collective inability to respond adequately. This dominant story could be summarized as follows:

Man is destroying the planet, but does not come into action. Worry, worry a lot! These are grave times. Change your life now!

This is not really motivating. We know that by now. Nevertheless, climate alarmism often dominates our mainstream culture. Good news about climate change is so rare that it is news in itself. And that has a downside: it encourages apathy, pessimism and fatalism.

At the end of last year a market survey of Ipsos appeared. In 26 different countries people aged between 16 and 64 were asked what view they take of solving the climate problem. A first look at this is positive: a small majority, especially in countries with emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India, is moderately to very positive. And note: only 4% still denies the problem. Climate denial seems finally to have been buried.

But there's a worrying catch. The research also shows that climate denial has now been replaced for a 'new enemy in town': climate fatalism. No less than 14 percent of the respondents adopt this attitude. I quote from the report:

it’s the climate fatalists who are the real news – those who think we now can’t do anything to reduce climate change. Until now, they have been a relatively hidden cohort. Because, of course, those who believe we simply can’t do anything about climate change have no reason to shout or tweet. They are quiet because they have given up.

And a shocking number of them are young people. 22 percent of those aged 16-34 agree that it is now too late to stop climate change. 39 percent of under-35s in India, 30 percent in Brazil, 27 percent in Spain and Sweden, and 29 percent in the United States.

Under the surface of our collective consciousness, there is thus a dangerous fatalism. And with each depressing news item, the door opens a little further to that. Add to that all the modern dystopian films, TV series and games and you will soon arrive at a deadly cocktail of self-reinforcing pessimism. If (young) people can only imagine the future as a dark hole, they will soon spend their live looking backwards: with their faces to the past and their backs to the future.

Strangely enough, there is also a certain attraction. "It’s very easy to succumb to fatalism, which is perhaps the logical extension of compassion fatigue – believing that we’re screwed no matter what we do is mysteriously tempting”, the British journalist Elisa Gabbert recently wrote in a piece in The Guardian. Climate change seems so big and complex, so hopeless, that we are quickly inclined to accept the approaching end.

Fear, passivity, denial, anger, melancholy, it is all part of it. This is inherent to the scale and scope and of a problem such as climate warming. But when fatalism becomes the final station, sure looks like the fat's in the fire this time. Then the mental door closes to an alternative future, to the determination to act. Psychologists say: fatalistic attitudes keep people from improving their lives, stimulate antisocial behavior and even undermine physical health.

Despite the still present majority of 'soft optimists' and the growing attention for sustainability in our society, this fatalism is a real danger that we have to take into account. The depressing messages about the climate will continue to come, that cannot be countered. How we deal with this and what we place next to it is up to us. That is why it is vitally important to invest in future perspectives, in imagination. Not to flee reality, but to break open the (black) reality, and force ourselves to imagine a better world. That is not naïve, but necessary.

'If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences', the American sociologist William Isaac Thomas already suggested in 1928. It is therefore encouraging that there are more and more signals from the society. People are trying to break through this apocalyptic horizon. Artists play a pioneering role in this.

An early vision of the solarpunk aesthetic, by Imperial Boy. Via MissOlivaLouise

An interesting phenomenon is 'solarpunk'. An artistic movement that slowly creeps out of the crevices of the internet. In accordance with the punk spirit of 'rebel against the system', they fight against structural pessimism in our late modern society. This time there isn’t a no-future-mentality, but a permanent refusal of doom thinking. 'Canceling the Apocalypse' is the adage of the Solarpunks. On the basis of speculative fiction, art, fashion and activism, one tries to find an answer to the question of how a sustainable society could look like and how we could get there. One of the leading figures in this movement, the British curator Jay Springett, writes the following:

Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?” The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful, the well-designed with the green and wild, the bright and colorful with the earthy and solid. Solarpunk can be utopian, just optimistic, or concerned with the struggles en route to a better world — but never dystopian. As our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not warnings. Solutions to live comfortably without fossil fuels, to equitably manage scarcity and share abundance, to be kinder to each other and to the planet we share. At once a vision of the future, a thoughtful provocation, and an achievable lifestyle.

Quite rereshing.

Why are we always so immensely fascinated by space travel, distant planets and new galaxies? Why our own planet doesn’t warm our heart? Why is climate change so uninspiring, so exhausting, so boring? Why do not we see climate change as a grandiose adventure, as an enormous opportunity to re-explore and shape our planet and our relationship with it?

Because we lack imagination. So get started.

You want to become a climate optimist? Go to their website.

Sources of the quoted parts can be found in the text.

Source image 1, 2, 3 and 4